Our World to Save
by gingersunlights
Summary: Clara Oswald tumbles through a fissure in the Universe, and wakes up in a most terrible place.
1. In a Pestulential Prison

Love me today, love me do, love me tomorrow, love her, too.  
Sat I, tortured in a cell, wondered what it's like in hell, abandoned hope I could not see, here you're given parts of me. A cracking heart, though broken be, is reparable inside. Softly punching, pounding through, seeping red through sleeping children lie awake; and in the night, their souls to take.

Clara thought that she might never escape.  
All those days, months travelling with the Doctor, and it had to end here. Only a month ago she had been so free. Nothing to bind her-no stone walls, no rattling of chains.  
She had heard the prison's name whispered through iron bars- Azkaban.  
An awful name, indeed, and for a repulsive place. A desolate place.  
Clara found that she could not cry. Those terrible monsters had taken even that small respite from her. She found that she spent most of her days sat in the middle of the cold, stone floor, staring out through the cursed bars at the front of her cell, imagining what the skyline might look like if she could see past the ice-clouds. Clara could just barely imagine a slashing of bright orange in her minds eye, but then the image was gone. She couldn't hold on. It wasn't fair.  
At night, Clara heard the screaming. There were wails echoing all about during the daytime, if one could call it that, but nothing so monstrous as the ones she could hear at night. Sometimes, the screams she heard were her own.  
It wasn't the screeching of her madwoman neighbor that kept her up at night, or the knowledge that some of the inmates were children, no. It was the nightmares.  
Whenever lady Clara tried to sleep, she saw the frightening faces of Cybermen and the not-faces of the mighty Dalek. Sleeping Clara could see nothing more than all the tragedies of her time with the Doctor, and so terrible they were.  
Falling, and ice-women, and gaps in time.  
Running, and silence, and angels, and queens.  
River Song killing the Doctor.  
It wasn't hers, the memory, but Amelia Pond's. She had given it to her one night in the space between Time. A secret place; A very, very, dark, and scary place.

Clara awoke one night-day from her most recent nightmare, jolted not by the terrors of her own mind, but the rustling of rough canvas and the jostling of metal.  
Afraid to open her eyes, Clara made herself look.  
"Sirius?"  
"Aye, lady, I've got to find my godson. Care to join me?"

Sirius had been Clara's right-side cellmate for the past eternity, and he had offered her the occasional kind word. He had feared she would go mad, Clara thought. He had been telling her of his godson, Harry. The reluctant Hero of the Wizarding World. He was very important, Sirius always said. Very important. And now, Sirius had said he was going to get him.

Clara didn't know how he had gotten free, but in her time with the Doctor, Clara had learned never to backtrack unless you had to.  
Cell door clinking open, Clara asked "How are we getting off the island?"  
With a grin, Sirius said "Magic."


	2. Away From Azkaban

The boat was old, and cracking, looking as though it was not long for this world. _Must be held together with magic.  
_Stepping carefully into it, over freezing water, Clara asked "Will this take us all the way to shore?"  
"Aye," said Sirius, "But it's there where we shall see the real trouble."  
Clara sat down in the boat next to Sirius, and waited for it to move. Of all he had told her in their time together, the marvels of magic were Sirius' favorite tales. Self inking quills, women who could turn into cats, and so many others. Clara figured a self-propelling boat wasn't too far-fetched for this reality.  
Not to disappoint, the boat did begin to move, and more smoothly than Clara had expected.  
The two escapees waited silently, and uneasily for the boat to cross through the ocean, both checking the space behind their backs every other moment.  
When she couldn't take the eerie quality of their journey any longer, Clara began to think aloud.  
"When we get to shore, d'you think those Auror-people will be waiting for us?"  
"Perhaps." Sirius responded. He wasn't too keen on finding out just what was waiting for them either, but he did have a few ideas.  
"Did I ever tell you that I'm an Animagus, Clara?"  
"Oh, is that how you made it out of the cell? Are you a snake or something?"  
Barely suppressing a grimace, Sirius said "No, lass, I am most certainly _not_ a snake. I'm a great, shaggy, black dog. I slipped out through the bars quite easily after all this time wasting away."  
"But haven't they got precautions, or something to keep animaguses in? I thought you said they were common enough not to be secret."  
"We are, lass, but to be legal, you've got to register with the ministry. I was a teenager when I became one, so I never did, and by the time I would have, the war was on already.  
Anyhow, I think I could slip away unnoticed by any who might wait for us, but we've got to do something about your human-ness."  
Clara snorted, and said "Dear, If I had a pound for every time I've heard that from the Doctor's mouth, I'd be rich enough to buy our way out of this mess."  
Sirius turned from her just then, having heard a rustling to his left.  
"The shore, it's almost upon us."  
A great swell of wet land rose from out of a localized fog. _Magic, again, most likely. I've never seen fog to that on it's_ _own_.  
Reaching the far left bank, the boat shuddered to a halt, sticking in the sand.  
"Looks like this is where we get off, lassie, come along."  
Sirius held a hand out for her, and Clara hoisted herself up and out of their precarious vessel. Standing up, the two travelers turned to face the trees.  
"Through there's our best bet, however unfortunate it might be." Sirius prompted.  
"Right then, off to Neverland we go."


	3. Under the Scottish Sun

"So I take it that you've got a problem with the approaching rat, yeah?" said Clara.  
"Indeed, dear, I do. You can never trust a rat enough to turn your back." replied Sirius, carefully backing away from the chittering creature.  
The two had made it as far at the first few rows of trees when the mangy beast had appeared, and Clara hadn't even noticed him. Sirius, on the other hand, had stopped his cautious slinking to look suspiciously at the thing.  
"Look, dear, I don't think the rat's gonna hurt us, but just to be sure, why don't you do your dog thing and eat him?"  
"Right then." said Sirius, and the rat's life was quite cut short.  
"Feel better?"  
"I do."  
"On we go."

Now the pair traveled through the forest, getting caught in swamps, sinking just a tich into the magical quicksand traps, and getting swiped at by monstrous trees that looked a bit too much like the whomping willow for Sirius' taste. The escapees had just finished wading through some rather nasty black bile from a really feral looking sphinx-like creature when bright, yellow light began to stream through the trees.  
"What d'you reckon?" asked Clara.  
"Could be a trick, but I don't think they'd go to this much trouble, do you?"  
"No, I don't. Want to give it a go?"

Walking through the last row of trees, Clara vision was filled with the lovely countryside of what she assumed was 1993 Scotland. Sirius had been counting the days. There were trees of cherry, apple and evergreen all around, and wide, open expanses of what looked to be grazing fields. Clara breathed in deeply, smelling the fresh life of a new day. Beside her, Sirius was crying silent tears.  
Reaching out to hold his hand, Clara asked Sirius "Where've we come out?"  
Pausing just a moment, he said "Well, love, it looks like we've made it back to the mainland."  
"Lovely, then, want to go for a run?" She asked with a grin.  
Wiping away tears of disbelief, Sirius could only grin back before he transformed.

And so, the lady and the tramp ran a victory lap around the Scottish countryside, rushing through the grass, climbing the tallest trees. They bathed in the river, uncaring of the cold. A first meal of apples, a honeysuckle flower for Clara's drying hair.  
Finally, she had escaped, and for the first time in twelve years, Sirius Black was free.


End file.
